She agreed with abortion rights activists that a woman's right to choose is paramount, and that it is therefore 'irrelevant' whether a fetus suffers pain, as abortion foes contend.

...In her ruling, the judge said it was "grossly misleading and inaccurate" to suggest the banned procedure verges on infanticide.

The partial birth abortion/dilation and extraction procedure is usually performed late in pregnancy, when the fetus is too large to be removed by just scraping out the uterus. It also happens to be late enough in pregnancy that the fetus would live if delivered intact rather than in little pieces. The only difference between the fetus in the womb and a premature baby is that you can see one and not the other.

And consider this. When a fetus dies in the womb of natural causes, the preferred method of delivery is not intact dilation and extraction, but conventional delivery, either vaginally by inducing labor, or by cesarean section (last link requires registration.). If it's safer to perform a dilation and extraction, as the proponents of the procedure argue, then why isn't it the procedure of choice for fetal corpses? And why are the proponents so eager to preserve its use on living fetuses? The answer is, because in most cases of natural fetal demise, the babies are wanted. And most parents, given the choice, want to see their baby and have a chance to grieve their loss. But, of course, in abortion, the goal is to deliver a dead baby not a live one. Better to cause the death out of sight than in sight.

If an infant dies in the woods and no one's there to witness it, did it ever live? According to partial-birth abortion activists and Judge Hamilton, no.